HDInsight, Hadoop For Windows

Now, here is a treat for those who want to go Hadoop way but don't love Linux that much. Microsoft is rolling out the first preview editions of its Apache Hadoop integration for Windows Server and Azure in a marriage of open source and commercial code, after a year of beta testing. And they call it HDInsight. HDInsight is available both on Windows Server ( or Windows 7) or as an Windows Azure service. HDInsight will empower organizations with new insights on previously untouched unstructured data, while connecting to the most widely used Business Intelligence (BI) tools.

Microsoft collaborated with Hortonworks to make this happen. Last year Microsoft had announced that it will integrate Hadoop into its forthcoming SQL Server 2012 release and Azure platforms, and had committed to full compatibility with the Apache code base. The first previews have been shown off at the Hadoop World show in New York and are open for download. HDInsight delivers Apache Hadoop compatibility for the enterprise and simplify deployment of Hadoop-based solutions. In addition, delivering these capabilities on the Windows Server and Azure platforms enables customers to use the familiar tools of Excel, PowerPivot for Excel and Power View to easily extract actionable insights from the data.

Microsoft also announced that it is going to expand partnership with Hortonworks, to give customers access to an enterprise-ready distribution of Hadoop with the newly released solutions. Having said that, I hope this Microsoft+Hortonwork relationship gets growing so that we keep on getting great things like HDInsight.

You can find more about HDInsight here. And if you are planning to give HDInsight a shot you can visit my post on this which shows how to install and start using Hadoop on windows using HDInsight.